DR. CAROLINE CHARPENTIER
**Update**
New Social Learning and Decisions lab website is up - please refer to this new website for up-to-date information!
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I have recently started my lab in the Department of Psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park. I will be hiring research assistants, graduate students, and postdocs with interests/skills in computational modelling, social neuroscience, and autism research. Please do not hesitate to reach out or check out the 'Join us!' page for more details!
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My research is supported by a NIMH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence award. The specific project involves investigating the behavioral, computational and neural mechanisms of social learning and their variation across individuals along psychiatry symptom dimensions, as well as along the autism spectrum.
I completed my PhD at University College London in the UK in 2016, co-supervised by Jon Roiser and Tali Sharot, and working on the interaction between emotion and decision-making. During my postdoc (2016-2023), I worked with John O'Doherty, and Ralph Adolphs at Caltech. For a brief period (2020-2021) I was also a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow with Benedetto De Martino at University College London.
In my research, I develop behavioral tasks, combined with neuroimaging (fMRI) and computational modelling techniques, to study how people learn and make decisions in social contexts and under various affective states. My approach is multidisciplinary, at the interface of behavioral economics, psychology, neuroscience and psychiatry.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Social Learning and Decision-Making
Computational models underlying social learning: how do we learn from observing others? How do we integrate social and experiential learning?
Information-seeking and Curiosity
Motivational biases during information gathering: how do people value knowledge and ignorance?
EDUCATION & TRAINING
2016-2023
California Institute of Technology, USA
Senior Postdoctoral Research Associate (Sept 2021-July 2023)
Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow (May 2020-Aug 2021)
Postdoctoral Scholar in Neuroscience (Oct 2016-April 2020)
Mentors: John O'Doherty, Ralph Adolphs, Benedetto De Martino (UCL)
Emotion and Decision-Making
How do emotions (emotional states, mood, affective disorders) influence decisions?
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2011-2016
University College London, UK
MS & PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience.
Advisors: Profs. Jon Roiser & Tali Sharot.
PhD Thesis: The interaction between emotion and economic decision-making. [PDF]
2008-2011
Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS), Lyon, France
BS & MS in Biology & Biosciences
Information-seeking in Social Contexts
In today's connected, social media and "fake news" world, what can we do about polarization of opinions, whereby people tend to only seek information from sources and people that agree with them?